The axe fell, and his head dropped into the basket. Danton looked proudly, imperturbably on as, one after another, the heads of his thirteen companions fell. He was the last to ascend the scaffold. For a moment he was softened as he thought of his wife.
"Oh my wife, my dear wife," said he, "shall I never see you again?" Then checking himself, he said, "But, Danton, no weakness." Turning to the executioner, he proudly remarked, "You will show my head to the people; it will be well worth the display."
His head fell. The executioner, seizing it by the hair, walked around the platform, holding it up to the gaze of the populace. A shout of applause rose from the infatuated people. "Thus," says Mignet, "perished the last defenders of humanity and moderation, the last who sought to promote peace among the conquerors of the Revolution and pity for the conquered. For a long time after them no voice was raised against the dictatorship of terror, and from one end of France to the other it struck silent and redoubled blows. The Girondists had sought to prevent this violent reign, the Dantonists to stop it. All perished, and the conquerors had the more victims to strike, the more the foes arose around them."
The Robespierrians, having thus struck down the leaders of the moderate party, pursued their victory, by crushing all of the advocates of moderation from whom they apprehended the slightest danger. Day after day the guillotine ran red with blood. Even the devoted wife of Camille Desmoulins, but twenty-three years of age, was not spared. It was her crime that she loved her husband, and that she might excite sympathy for his fate. Resplendent with grace and beauty, she was dragged before the Revolutionary Tribunal. Little Horace was left an orphan, to cry in his cradle. Lucile displayed heroism upon the scaffold unsurpassed by that of Charlotte Corday or Madame Roland. When condemned to death she said calmly to her judges,
"I shall, then, in a few hours, again meet my husband. In departing from this world, in which nothing now remains to engage my affections, I am far less the object of pity than are you."
Robespierre had been the intimate friend of Desmoulins and Lucile. He had often eat of their bread and drunk of their cup in social converse. He was a guest at their wedding. Madame Duplessis, the mother of Lucile, was one of the most beautiful and accomplished women of France. In vain she addressed herself to Robespierre and all his friends, in almost frantic endeavors to save her daughter.
INTERIOR OF THE REVOLUTIONARY TRIBUNAL.